In the West Riding of Yorkshire, not many miles removed from the line of the great North Road, singularly and somewhat romantically situated on a vast rocky hill, projecting sternly and abruptly into the lovely valley of the Nid, stands the old borough town of Knaresborough. As you approach it from the south, the aspect it presents is singularly wild and picturesque. A long line of steep limestone crags, running from east to west, limits the view in front; the river, deep, black and sullen, wheeling along below their base in many a turbid ripple, until it skirts their western cape, a huge and perpendicular crag of shaley limestone, crowned by the massy relics of an old Norman keep, rifted and gray, and overrun with immemorial ivy, but still majestic in their hoary grandeur. Beneath the shelter of this formidable keep—which, in its day, before the levelling force of gunpowder had reduced warfare to a mere matter of scientific calculation, had been deemed quite impregnable—the straggling country town climbs the hill-side from the stream’s level, where the road is carried over a narrow, high-backed bridge of stone, in one long zigzag street, so perilously slippery and steep that the most daring riders dismount from their surest horses, whether ascending or descending, until, the summit gained, it expands into a neat borough, with market-place, and hostelries, and banks, and churches, all overlooked, however, and commanded by the old castle; and, in its turn, overlooking and commanding the wide range of hilly country of which it occupies the extreme and highest promontory. Such is the picture it presents to the traveller of the present day, and singularly beautiful is that picture! The huge gray ruins and the stained limestone precipices, relieved and set off by the deep emerald verdure of the wide pastures in the valley, and the dark foliage of the hanging woods which skirt the margin of the river; the stream itself here dark and deep and silent, and there flashing like silver in the sunlight, and brawling noisily about the base of the great castle-rock; and, more than all, the life and animated bustle of the modern town, contrasted with the dim memories and solemn silence of those old towers, which frown upon the noisy thoroughfares of men, most like a grim and ghastly skeleton, glaring down from the gothic niche of some cathedral church upon the merry sports of thoughtless childhood. Far different was the scene which Knaresborough presented toward the middle of the seventeenth century, Some few weeks later than the fatal field of Marston, whereon, untimely sacrificed and vainly, by the mad rashness of Prince Rupert, the flower of England’s loyal chivalry lay weltering in their gore, for one who neither prized their faith nor sorrowed at their fall.